pbulk build problem?
I got the similar problem. Just for my study,

• Once I have setup pbulk environment (2011/Nov) with NetBSD/amd64 5.1
• I had another pbulk environment on NetBSD/i386 6.0_BETA on another machine (2012/Mar)
• I've tried to revive the first environment.
  1. pkgsrc directory is freshy update by cvs update -dPA
  2. Remove (by pkg_delete with and without -r and -f) pkg_bulk side
  3. bootstrap again
  4. Try small set.

Now I understand 'Illegal variable name is from /bin/csh'.
Strange, /bin/csh is not on duty, isn't it ? I have minor modification on csh (err.c) to expand the error message, but I am not able to compile it yet, so far.

Index: bin/csh/lex.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/cvsroot/src/bin/csh/lex.c,v
retrieving revision 1.27
diff -u -r1.27 lex.c
--- bin/csh/lex.c	17 Jan 2010 12:15:36 -0000	1.27
+++ bin/csh/lex.c	16 Mar 2012 04:26:17 -0000
@@ -481,6 +481,7 @@
 	    }
 	}
 	else {
+	    fprintf(stderr, "%s: %s:%d --> %02c ---\n",__func__, __FILE__,__LINE__, c);
 	    *np = 0;
 	    seterror(ERR_VARILL);
 	    addla(name);